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moderndayruth

~ Tarot inspired essays and more

moderndayruth

Monthly Archives: June 2020

A Daughter of the Childless One (an excerpt)

28 Sunday Jun 2020

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In my dream, it was always the four us, my parents, grandmother and I. We were moving from one country to another, leaving everything familiar behind. I was changing schools, uniforms, friends, languages. In the beginning of the dream, I was growing roots, towards its middle I learned that when the roots are cut – it hurts. So I stopped growing roots. I started behaving  like a stranger who’s only temporarily there, in my own dreaming. Towards the end of the dream, I had became a perpetual stranger, a recidivist foreigner, an all time nomad;  a wanderer, a traveler, someone who’s just around for a short while, and not even that long.

I met some people, in that dream, they asked: how long are you staying?  They knew we would part sooner or later, we knew it too. I knew all of it was temporary – the dream, my home, my friends, the languages that took me so long to learn, I knew that I would leave it all behind, soon.

I woke up in Florence one morning and looked at Ponte Vecchio through my bedroom’s window. I was in time to grab my morning espresso and rush across the bridge towards the Market of the Piglet and and the building where my language school was.

Florence is the city best situated for the heartbroken and for those fatally ill of general nostalgia. There is something in that city that predisposes you to sigh into the breeze above Arno. The city is so beautiful, so marvelous – that many faint, some suffer from ephemeral heart conditions and some are struck by the city’s charm to the point of developing temporal insanity. It’s called The Syndrome of Florence.

If you are profoundly sad or dreamy for a prolonged period of time, Florence is the place to be. Rome, with its bright colors, open squares and flashy fountains would only drain you, the sad you, the dreamy you. Naples would cry so hard, that you would end up comforting the good old romantic. Florence is the city for you, the noble lady would pick up your dark mood, but it would be beyond her poise to acknowledge it with anything more than a merely noticeable nod. A noble lady of that age – albeit you wouldn’t dare asking the lady about it – would certainly know what a heartache is, even if a general one. She would understand your mourning over the country you lost, the dream that you couldn’t wake up from and your language that went extinct. Maybe the city would hint on the stories it knew – of the mistress of a king who was the love of his life – albeit he never made her the Queen, of  secretive mystics and painters who drank heavily, of alchemists ever seeking the elixir, of shrewd merchants  and  entertaining con-artists, of street musicians and fishermen who knew many tales and of market sellers who knew it all… For suffering and wisdom are universal, the pain is equal, it does not discriminate, it goes after each and every one of us all the same, since ever and until our very end.

Rome’s exuberance would tire you if you are sad, or dreamy, Naples’ sun shines too bright when your thoughts are dark or foggy; the noble Florence with its cobbled alleys – for cobble isn’t the same everywhere – the posh sound ch which its dwellers pronounce as if whistling –  they say it’s done so to diverse from the rest (an alien, they say,  will out himself by merely pronouncing the ordinary k instead), the pizza crust with its particular Florentine taste, clubs underground of which tourists are unaware and drag queens in Via Nazionale, friendly drag queens who will tell you Florentine secrets at the local hairdresser’s – that’s what you need when you are waking up from a nightmare, or still feel ephemerally dreamy.

In my class all were foreigners, like I was, and even the teacher was from somewhere else – she felt equally alien as we did, albeit Florence is the best city to be an alien, given that you have to be one. The talk of the city is that some were born in Florence, of parents who were also born in the city – but those people you will never meet; they must have their own hidden ways for transportation, their own schools and their own hairdressers, because your path will never cross any of theirs. All the people you will meet will be aliens, like yourself. Some would have come for a month, some – for two; many would stay just couple of weeks, or even less – and only few will stay for as long as nine months.

To get to my country, you need to wake up from dreaming, leave Florence behind, head south – all the way down, to the ancient city of Bari, you need to embark on the ship and cross the Adriatic Sea. The journey lasts one night, in the morning you shall awake in the Black Mountains. The climate is very different here, albeit it is Mediterranean too. As soon as you step down from the ship in the port of the city of Bar, what you will feel is that the time passes slower.

In Florence, the time runs, together with its hurrying tourists, in Naples – the time gets drunk on the abundant sunlight, and it sings the songs of the sea and romantic love; in the Black Mountains the time has nowhere special to go, and it slows down to the point where it feels as if it almost stopped. The magnificent olive trees, spellbound long ago, don’t go anywhere – they are always there, and it seems that even the people who live in houses made of stone, under the olive trees – never hurry, and maybe even never move.

Nobody is an alien here, all were born here, of parents who were born here as well. The rocks of the Black Mountains haven’t heard neither of mistresses to the kings, nor of street musicians and broken hearts. The rocks have other stories to tell, of battles and knights, dreams of victories and nightmares of betrayals, those stories I was told when I arrived from Florence, having realized that I wasn’t dreaming.

L.R.S.

My novel “The Daughter of the Childless One” was published by Nova Knjiga, 2017

Prominent Montenegrin actress, Prima of our National theater CNP – Varja Djukic [http://cnp.me/varja-dukic/] is driving force behind numerous art events and one of the main figures of the contemporary Montenegrin culture.

Among else, she is the founder and manager of legendary Podgorica’s bookstore – “Karver” [http://www.karver.org/] , where is also held the famed international literary festival “Where i am calling from” [since 2009, https://www.facebook.com/odaklezovem/].

One of the Varja’s genius ideas to promote our culture and our contemporary literature is website – library Poetics of the country – My Montenegro [ https://www.poetikazemlje.me/].

Karver bookstore in this way offers free of charge over 500 books by Montenegrin authors, both classics and contemporary, as well as over 100 audio interpretations, video interviews etc.

Among else, you can listen to audio version of the excerpt from my novel – there’s the possibility to enjoy richness of Varja Djukic voice, her interpretative skills as well as the beauty of our language: http://www.poetikazemlje.me/index.php/lena-ruth-stefanovic

#živimokulturu

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Wordtrip 2020

25 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by moderndayruth in Uncategorized

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Over forty poets and performers took part, and over 2 000 viewers over the 8 days celebrated the European culture.

This year’s videos are still available here:

https://www.parislitup.com/wordtrip

Digital “roadtrip” around Europe resulted in daily 30-minute video featuring short performances from artists from as many countries on the continent as possible.

Videos were premiered on Facebook, then uploaded to the Wordtrip YouTube channel.

Here’s the link to part 6. In part 4., i’ll welcome you to Montenegro.

Enjoy!

#živimokulturu

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TRI PJESME LENE RUTH STEFANOVIĆ IZ ZBIRKE “IZVINITE, MISLIM DA UMIREM”, OKF, Cetinje, CDNK, Podgorica, 2020.

23 Tuesday Jun 2020

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So happy to be published at Željko Belinić famed art blog
Čovjek-časopis! (The poems are in Montenegrin.) I’ll post translation to English soon!

čovjek-časopis

POČUJ,

danas,
sedmog dana mjeseca Lava
pet hiljada sedamsto sedme
po starom računanju vremena
u smiraj pretoplog dana
u Podgorici,
prije nego što na kraju moje ulice
počne da zalazi umorno sunce
tu, đe se nebo spušta na zemlju
zapaliću svijeće
od gline sam načinjena
u prah ću se vratiti
ali ja znam da je
Bog, naš Bog,
stvorio ovaj svijet
moj svijet
samo za mene

***

NUDIŠ MI VELIKODUŠNO SVOJE PREZIME

Starine bi rekle da i nije neko
A mene bi kao trebali da uzmu
Sve i da sam pod manom
Navodno sam od takvog roda
Znaš te priče
Nadgornjavanje, nadplemenjavanje,
Olimpijske igre među bratstvenicima
Ti ne očekuješ puno, kažeš
Sve ka’ kod majke
Minus gunđanje
(skuvano, oprano, ispeglano…)
plus seks
ne smijem da se ugojim, to valjda znam
moji su mi valjda obezbijedili
stalan posao, po jedan stan u gradu i na moru i dobra kola
koja ćeš…

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It was the best of times…

20 Saturday Jun 2020

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“Chronos” and “Altar of Emptiness” are two poems which are among the best known poems from my body of work. It seems that concepts of Le temps perdu and ( stemming from it?) minimalism resonate with audience across the globe. These two poems were first included in the anthology published by Ratkovic’s poetry evenings [RVP, 2018] and i presented them live at the festival. The same year, i had the honor to present them once again (among other poems) at Rahovec international poetry festival; finally both were included in American selection of poetry by Balkan poets, among work by the shining stars from the region such as Tanja Bakić, Nikola Madžirov, Fahredin Shehu and others [Poetry from the Bslksns, Inner Child Press, 2018].
Enjoy!

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Live the culture

13 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by moderndayruth in Uncategorized

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#živimokulturu is an amazing project created by Ministry of culture of Montenegro in cooperation with numerous free lance artists. Two hundred artists proposed numerous creative ways to live our culture under most constrained of the circumstances, during the global pandemics.

There is that famous saying by Orson Welles: “in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Follow the hashtag #živimokulturu on social networks and you will see what Montenegrin artists created during “the worst of times…

Love&Light

moderndayruth

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Lena Ruth Stefanovic

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  • “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
  • About me
  • About this blog & Awards received
  • Copyright notice

Recent Posts

  • Tri boje: bijela, crna, crvena
  • Nevinost sa niskim zaštitnim faktorom
  • Mrlja u mojoj svijesti
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  • moderndayruth
June 2020
M T W T F S S
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891011121314
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22232425262728
2930  
« Nov   Jul »

Top Posts & Pages

  • Tri boje: bijela, crna, crvena
  • Nevinost sa niskim zaštitnim faktorom
  • Mrlja u mojoj svijesti
  • RETURN
  • Spavaćica moje majke
  • književna premijera: ROMAN LENE RUTH STEFANOVIĆ "AIMÉE / VOLJENA", OKF, Cetinje, 7/2020; ulomak
  • Crvene šterike
  • Bookfair
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